


Shed Feathers

by longaslovelasts



Category: Borderlands
Genre: F/F, but this ship is pure and good so have this random group of things, i have no clue how to use this site guys, most of them are ripped off my tumblr, my writing blog is a mess but all of these are mine i promise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-11-22
Packaged: 2018-08-13 02:47:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 8,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7959322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longaslovelasts/pseuds/longaslovelasts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angel had spent a life suffering as the catalyst for Handsome Jack's plans. Now she was free, with Sanctuary as her new home and a family that Jack certainly wouldn't have approved of. Various snippets of Angel/Gaige from varying timelines, totally canon-breaking. Maybe some continuity here and there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Through a Screen

**Author's Note:**

> All works that end up here will also be on my tumblr writing blog, longaslovelastswrites. They're probably gonna end up there first, so if you're into this stuff, totally go follow it. It's usually not too much of a mess.

“Hey, Gaige?” Angel’s voice was soft, Gaige’s ECHO kept quiet to keep from waking the other Vault Hunters. The Highlands were quiet for now, the stalkers cooperating for the moment while Gaige kept watch. “I need to ask you a favor. It’s nothing bad, I promise. I’m just alone and I need to talk.”

Gaige poked the small fire with a nearby stick, glancing down at her ECHO, where Angel’s video chat was. She had dropped the Guardian Angel facade and the visual effects with it. The face that looked back at her was thin and deeply shadowed, with eyes like shallow puddles rather than the absolutely beautiful illusion she had put on for months beforehand.

“Yeah, Angel, whatever you need. I’ve got a little over an hour until my watch is done. Are you okay?”

Angel hummed thoughtfully, with a bit of sadness. “For now. It’s just too quiet. I need you to tell me something. Anything. Like a story.” Her thin fingers picked restlessly around her eridium injection ports in her chest, where the thick metallic tubes hung like chains. “Sometimes he comes and talks, but… it’s never good. It’s about killing you. Or torturing you, and then killing you. I just need something else to think about.”

“Most of the stories I’ve had lately have been about killing, damn.” Gaige leaned back against a rocky spire behind her, tapping the stone with her robotic fingers. “I guess I never really told you why I made Deathtrap, though. I mean you obviously know about the Marcy incident, but there was a lot more to it than shoving it in her stupid face. He was meant to stop bullying.”

“I read that when Jack had me research you,” Angel said, resting her chin on one hand and closing her eyes. “I’m listening, I promise. I’m just tired. Keep going.” She breathed out slowly, as though it pained her to do so, and Gaige didn’t doubt for a second that it did. Eridium did terrible things to people. Angel was on such an incredibly high dose that Gaige had no idea how she managed to talk, let alone function at all.

“Deathtrap was meant to stop bullying because believe it or not, I wasn’t really popular.” Gaige chuckled to herself, idly scratching the anarchy symbol into the dry dirt. “Especially not in high school after everyone’s edgy phases wore off and I stayed the same. So eventually I decided- I like robots, I hate bullies, let’s combine all that into one kickass project that’ll solve all my problems. I didn’t really plan on killing Marcy, so don’t believe Eden-5’s media. It’s corrupt as all hell and they swear that I premeditated that.” She sighed and wiped the anarchy sign away. “So I started building DT. That’s also when I cut off my arm, but I bet you know that part already.”

Angel nodded. “I heard your ECHO logs. Did you really build your arm while you were bleeding out and down a hand?”

“Oh, this? Yeah, there was a lot of blood involved. Like, I had to jet the arm stump with a healing syringe, and then build the arm, and then cut the healed parts off so I could attach it to my nerves.” She chuckled. “No big deal. It’s so metal, it’s worth it.” She flashed a smile at Angel, though Angel’s eyes were still closed, tired-looking but attentive. “But yeah, Dad helped. I mean he screamed a lot but he held things so I could use tools kind of decently. Eventually I just put on some really loud metal music so the screaming sounded normal.”

“What’s your dad like?” Angel’s voice was almost a breath, like they were discussing something holy, something unattainable. “Is he like you?”

“Like me?” Gaige thought for a moment, poking her metal hand into the edges of the fire, feeling no heat. “I mean, he’s great. He always thought I was great, even when most of the other kids didn’t. He always brought me hot chocolate, and tea, and snacks in my workshop when I kind of forgot to go in for dinner. He puts up with all the loud music and robot malfunctions, so I… I guess he’s cooler than I can even say. I miss him.” It took serious effort to keep her voice from cracking there, and it still wavered.

Angel’s pale blue eyes opened at the sound, concern on her pale features. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“No, no, no, it’s okay, just-” Gaige sniffed, dragging one arm across her eyes to get rid of a few spare tears. “Shit. Sorry, Angel, totally didn’t mean to do that. I just miss him. Someday, I’ll take you to meet him, okay? I promise.”

“Gaige…” Angel’s voice was gentle and resigned. “It probably won’t happen. My father won’t let me go.” She touched the mangle of metal that connected her to the eridium injector, where cold metal twisted into her skin and purple pulsed through her veins. “And I can’t survive without eridium. It’s just how things are. My dad-”

Gaige sniffed, and then bared her teeth in a tearful snarl. “Fuck your dad. He did this to you, and when I get to you, I’m going to kick his ass twice for everything he’s done to you. Every lie, every day you spent throwing up eridium, every fucking time you cried. I’ll do whatever it takes. If I was a Siren, I’d get in that machine and take your place just so I could spit in his face whenever he walked by. If it helped you, I’d do it.”

Angel sighed, pushing a limp strand of hair out of her eyes.”You’re my best friend, Gaige,” she whispered. “Your day will come. Lilith and Roland and Mordecai, they had their chances to stop Jack. But you and your Vault Hunter friends can do this. Just… don’t count on me making it out of here.”

“I’ll do anything if it helps. Maybe Maya could help. I mean, she’s a Siren. That’s gotta be worth something.” Thinking, Gaige pulled her hair out of its pigtails, running her hands through it. “Maybe she could do something with her Phaselock. I don’t know.” She rested her face in her hands, blowing out a low breath. “Okay. Sorry, I’ll work this out later. Now you tell me something. Something that you really want to see when we make it off this planet together.”

“It’s a bad idea to fantasize like this,” Angel said, but relented nonetheless. “It sounds really stupid, but I want to go get coffee somewhere. I want to go into a cafe, and sit down to read with a really good coffee, and we’ll just spend an afternoon like that. With nothing to worry about, and just hours to spend.” She smiled faintly. “It’s no huge concert, or world tour, or fancy vacation, but that’s just one of those little dreams.”

Gaige chuckled, shaking her head. “I’d kill for coffee right now. With mocha or something, and tons of sugar. I’m pretty sure Moxxi’s had people raid Hyperion shipments for it. If we were in Sanctuary, I’d be at the bar right now just for some gross, watery coffee. Ooh, and a proper burger or something that isn’t made of skag. Skag tastes like armpit.” She made a quiet gagging sound, wrinkling her nose. “Someday we’ll get Moxxi to make us something really good. She’d do it for us, I bet. She’d be happy to see that you’re safe.”

“Maybe someday.” Angel’s sad smile made it clear what she thought of their odds. “Until then, I’ll try to look for ways to get out of this. If anything, we’ll have tried.”

“We’ll do it.” Gaige made the brightest, most reassuring grin she possibly could, the fierce smile she wore after winning firefights and killing bandits by the dozen. “Don’t worry, Angel. I’ll show up like the prince in those stupid old stories about princesses. Except this time the prince is a teenage girl with a shotgun and a ton of anarchy, and the dragon is your asshole dad. God that’ll be satisfying.”

Angel laughed despite the very bloody mental image- she had seen what happened to marauders when Gaige shot them with full anarchy. “You’d miss!” she exclaimed. “That’d ruin the moment.”

Gaige laughed too, a little louder than she had meant to, and Zer0 stirred from sleep and looked over at her. “Shit! Sorry Zer0, talking to a friend. Didn’t mean to wake you up.”

They chuckled softly, and had Gaige been able to see their face, she imagined they’d be smirking. But as a person of few words, they simply nodded, a winking emoticon on their mask, and laid back down on the scrubby highland grass.

“Gotta go, Angel,” Gaige whispered to her ECHO. “They don’t really know I’m this close to you, except Zer0 I guess. And they’re pretty cool. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay? Stay safe.”

“Goodnight,” Angel murmured back, waving a hand and letting the connection taper off and close. “And please, you stay safe too.”


	2. Phantom Pain and Lazy Mornings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pandora leaves marks on people long after they've left the planet.

Mornings were mercifully slow with Gaige’s family. The planet they had settled on after leaving Eden-5 was warm without being blazingly, insufferably hot the way Pandora could be, giving the early hours a soft haziness that Angel could appreciate. It wasn’t Gaige’s style, naturally. She was always up early, like she still expected there to be bandits to fight and threshers to hunt down, and Angel was content to watch her root through her dresser for a clean outfit and check her ECHOcast (the number of subscribers had gone down since the Marcy incident, she lamented, but she still made regular updates.)

There were rare mornings when Gaige was slower than usual, though, and those were the only times that Angel could tell she was a veteran of countless battles. Gaige would wince when she had to use her left arm, touching the ring of scar tissue where metal met skin as though she expected to see blood when she pulled her fingertips away. Angel knew by heart all the scars left over from their time on Pandora. The health needles couldn’t get rid of everything. She had traced reverent lines over jagged sawblade marks left by psychos, made pale by healing and time, kissed the thin slash over Gaige’s collarbone, the only remaining trace of a failed assassination attempt. They were both nursing old injuries, and Angel, knowing very well the feeling of weakness, knew better than most how to handle it.

Gaige was easy to read, and Angel knew she was hurting the moment her breath caught as she tried to get up in the morning. There was the faintest shudder to her every move, an unsteadiness that didn’t suit her. Carefully, Angel reached out to pull her back down to the softness of the mattress and veritable nest of blankets. “Hey,” she murmured, avoiding touching Gaige’s left arm as she looped her own over her girlfriend. “You feeling okay?”

Gaige nodded stiffly. “It’s fine!” Her voice was almost squeaky, high with pain. “Why?”

“Your arm is hurting you again.” Angel sighed, tracing slow spirals across Gaige’s back. “You don’t need to pretend with me. I know.” In truth, she was just as experienced with pain. Sometimes the deep ache of eridium withdrawal made her bones sore and blurred her vision and thoughts. “Do you need anything?”

“Ugh, maybe some painkillers or something. Do painkillers work on phantom pains? I don’t think they do.” Gaige groaned, leaning in closer to Angel and tucking her head under the Siren’s chin. “This sucks.”

Angel hummed sympathetically. “We could still try. I can make some coffee, or something. We can just stay home today instead of going out.”

“That’d be great,” Gaige said. “Sorry, I really wanted to go out, but…” She shrugged, and then winced, regretting the motion. “Ow. I’ll make it up to you, promise.”

Angel shook her head, gently extricating herself from Gaige. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be right back with coffee. Pick something to watch on the Echonet- we’ll just watch movies and hang out.” She ran a hand backwards through her hair in a vain attempt at neatening it and slipped out of the room, and down the stairs to the first floor. Gaige’s family’s new house was full of natural light, soft and warm, a sharp contrast to the room that Angel had known for most of her life. Seeing as it was Gaige’s house, there was a few weapons lying around, but overall it was an almost idyllic picture of normal life.

Angel set about making coffee, fetching the grounds from one of the drawers and putting on the water. As she waited, she leaned against the counter, poking around in the cabinets for snacks. Gaige always kept all manner of random snack foods on hand.

“Morning, Angel.” Gaige’s father strolled in as Angel pulled the graham crackers out of the cupboard, forced to kneel on the counter to reach the high shelf that Gaige had stashed them on with the help of Deathtrap. He was good to her, but a part of her still startled at the mere idea of a dad. She swore she heard Jack’s voice some days. Still, he had done nothing but be kind to her, so she smiled.

“Good morning.” Her voice held all the professional detachment of the Guardian Angel persona. “Gaige and I are going to stay here today.”

Gaige’s father nodded, rustling through the cabinets for a pan. “The phantom pains again? She had a lot of problems with that right after cutting her arm off.” He sighed, setting the pan on the stove. “Want some breakfast? She usually gets up for pancakes.”

Angel nodded, pulling a graham cracker from the package and sitting on the counter. Jack would have had her grounded for that alone, but Gaige’s father was hard to anger. He hummed some tuneless song to himself as he fetched the eggs from the fridge, flicking his long red ponytail over his shoulder. “Want me to get her?” she asked, already poised to slide off the counter and go back upstairs.

The middle-aged man shook his head, grinning. “I’ve got it,” he said, and then shouted. “Gaige! Pancakes!”

There was a resounding thud, presumably Gaige herself hitting the floor in her haste to get out of bed. “Fuck yeah!” Gaige scrabbled across her room and pounded down the stairs, regardless of pain, her metal arm hanging uselessly by her side. “It’s been, like, _months_ since I’ve had those! Pandoran food sucks.”

Her dad chuckled, a deep and resounding sound. “I’m sure I could find skag in one of those weird hippie markets downtown. If you start missing it, let me know.”

Gaige gagged, crossing the kitchen to sit with Angel, on her left side so her metal arm didn’t touch her. “Nope. If I die before I ever have to eat skag again, it’ll be too soon.”

“I thought your arm hurt,” Angel said with a soft laugh. “You seem fine.”

“Oh, it totally hurts, I just really love food.” Gaige flashed her a smile. “And you. And you know what makes my two favorite things similar?” She leaned in closer, whispering in Angel’s ear, “I get to eat them both.”

The sound Angel made was caught between a laugh and a gasp, and she immediately regretted pushing Gaige off the counter.


	3. Starting Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel is officially welcomed to Gaige's family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is bad and unedited but hey, what else do you expect from me? This is pure self-indulgence, after all.

__“So you’re sure he won’t mind…” The implication of ‘me being a siren’ went unsaid, but the way Angel pulled her sweater’s collar tighter to her neck to hide a swirl of tattoos gave it away. “I want to live with you, I promise, but you heard Maya talk about how most people wanted her for her bounty. Who knows what this will do to your family?”

“Angel. I promise, he’ll love you.” Gaige flashed her a brilliant sideways smile, energy in her every feature, in the way her robotic arm tapped one finger restlessly against her thigh. She reached for Angel’s hand, intertwining their fingers reassuringly as they walked through the suburbs of the city their interplanetary shuttle had landed in. “My dad was cool when I sliced my arm off, for the most part. I mean he screamed a lot and almost fainted but still. He has a cyborg daughter, so I really doubt her siren girlfriend will be a problem. I’m more worried he’ll notice that I got a tattoo on Pandora, and that the equipment totally wasn’t sterilized.” 

Angel hummed noncommittally, deeply aware of how strange she and Gaige looked when compared to the average person. Gaige had more or less forgone regular haircuts on Pandora, and her red hair was long now, wild and almost spiky in a way that only she could manage to make look good. She had let it loose for now- the weather was cool on this planet at this time of year, and without the oppressive heat of much of Pandora, she was free to leave it free and fittingly untamed. Her prosthetic had been streaked with war paint that never quite came off after the battle of the bunker, and there was an overall fierceness to her now that far eclipsed the girl who had first appeared on Pandora. Angel herself looked much the same, still spindly and tall and delicate, but less like the barely-living husk she had been after being rescued from the control core. Her tattoos were hidden by her clothes, save for those on her hands and the thin filigree that curled away from the corner of her left eye. She deliberately concealed the latter with her hair, and the former as much as she could by holding Gaige’s hand with nervous energy.

“Okay, I think it’s this way?” Gaige pulled gently on her hand to lead her down a side street, stopping in front of one of the identical houses. She checked the address on her echo, and nodded to herself. “Yep, this is the one.” She ran her metal hand through her hair, trying in vain to straighten the crimson strands, but only succeeded in getting one of her fingers caught in a knot and hissing in pain as she rushed to untangle it. “Shit, ow. You ready, Angel?”

Angel nodded slightly, suddenly aware of how shallow her breath was and how fast her heart was beating- what if he hated her for what she was? Her own father had hated her siren powers, and she didn’t even know Gaige’s dad. He could be the same. Her rapid-fire stream of thought was interrupted when Gaige squeezed her hand reassuringly.  
“Just be you, okay? He’ll love you. I promise, and after everything that went down on Pandora, you know that I never break promises.” Gaige hugged her hard, deceptively strong, and pressed a butterfly-light kiss against her jawline as she pulled away. “Let’s go.” She didn’t remark on Angel’s nervous grip on her hand, or the way her fingers trembled between her own.

The front door opened almost as soon as Gaige could start leading Angel up the steps. The man who rushed out was undeniably Gaige’s father- his eyes were the same electric green, lit from behind with energy and unrestrained excitement, and Gaige’s newly long hair matched his own, styled in a ponytail to keep it out of his way. Gaige squealed with unrestrained excitement, rushing forward (and inadvertently pulling Angel with her) to hug her dad with her free arm. Angel pulled back just a little, close enough that she was still holding Gaige’s hand but at enough of a distance that she wasn’t a part of their hug.   
When Gaige’s father finally let her go, ruffling his daughter’s long hair and smiling wide, tears in his eyes. “I missed you so much,” he said, kissing her forehead. “And I’m so happy you’re back.” 

Angel had only ever seen this tearful joy in Gaige one other time: after she had rescued Angel from the control core and been told she would recover. Gaige wiped her eyes with her sleeve, squeezing Angel’s hand and pulling her closer. “Dad, I want you to meet someone,” she said, reassuringly running her thumb over the back of Angel’s hand. “This is Angel. She’s my girlfriend, and I want her to stay with us.” Gaige didn’t even react when Angel’s hand tightened nervously around hers, hard enough to hurt.  
Angel’s heart raced, and she subconsciously pressed closer to Gaige, looking down. Already, she was planning for rejection. Gaige wouldn’t want to leave her dad, and if he didn’t want Angel there, she wasn’t sure if Gaige would follow if she had to leave. She couldn’t be alone again, not after the control core. Her mind fired as rapidly as her heart, and she jumped when a hand descended onto her shoulder, gentle and warm.

Gaige’s father smiled at her, though he had to look up a bit to match her height. “It’s good to finally meet you, Angel,” he said warmly. “Gaige never stopped talking about you, you know.”

“Dad!” Gaige whined.

He grinned, leaning in closer to Angel and whispering, ‘She’s totally obsessed with you. And based on what I’ve been hearing, she’s a lucky girl.” And he hugged her, the sort of hug her father hadn’t given her since before locking her away. She froze at first, unaccustomed to the contact from anyone but Gaige, but let him do it. “You’ll always be welcome here. If Gaige likes you, you’re something special.”

“Is it okay if I tell him, just to get it out of the way?” Gaige asked quietly, asking permission with her eyes. “He won’t mind. I promise.” When Angel nodded hesitantly, Gaige squeezed her hand gratefully, giving her a smile. “Angel’s a siren, dad. As in, one in six in the universe, awesomely powerful siren. That doesn’t change anything, right?” Her tone betrayed that she already knew the answer.

Her dad laughed. “You would manage to come home with a siren, wouldn’t you?” He met Angel’s eyes, gaze fond and free of judgement to any degree. “Nothing has changed. If you want to stay with us, I will love you like another daughter. You’ll be safe here.”

Gaige turned toward Angel, grabbing her other hand in her robotic one. “So?” Her gaze was expectant and almost nervous. “Will you stay?”

As so few things in Angel’s life seemed to do, the answer came easily to her despite her initial fears. “I’d love to,” she said, and knew she had made the right decision when Gaige hugged her tightly, joyfully, and officially accepted her into the family she had already, for all intents and purposes, been a part of.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haha suffer. I know this ship has enough angst, but this was good style practice, and why not?

By the time the last constructor has been flown into Hero’s Pass, Gaige’s aim is shaky enough that none of her teammates dare pass in front of her. Anarchy floods hot and vicious through her blood, spills red over her vest when her shield breaks under the force of a rocket barrage from the constructor, and pools around her as she’s forced to her knees. She bares her teeth in an animalistic grin, reloads her corrosive SMG, and unleashes the full magazine into the constructor’s eye, having gone down directly in front of it, according to her (hastily scrabbled-together) plan. She laughs when it explodes, metal shards half-eaten by acid thrown into the air with destructive force.

Everything is disturbingly quiet then. Zer0 plants their sword in the heart of a fallen engineer who has the misfortune of twitching at the wrong time, and save for the hiss of fried circuits, the pass is desolate. A part of Gaige hates it- the part that’s rich with anarchy and chaos, that aches to rip out Handsome Jack’s throat, is also itching for more foes to fight. She doesn’t join Salvador and Axton in picking through the mess of the constructor she destroyed for valuable loot. She ignores Maya, who offers healing. Passes by Zer0, whose unreadable gaze follows her toward the opened vault. Krieg pauses, seems to listen to some unhearable voice, and ambles after her, making no move to stop her but walking in her shadow.

“It’s too quiet.” Gaige says to no one in particular. Once, there was someone who would have replied, the angel on the echo, but her voice is gone. “Jack has to pay for that.”

“Gaige…” Maya has caught up to her, long smooth stride carrying her alongside Gaige with uncanny grace in the shadow of the vault. Her tattoos glow softly, unusually, in the dark. “Nothing is going to change what happened to Angel. You know that.”

The set of Gaige’s jaw is tight enough to hurt her. “Yeah. But I can make him pay for every second she spent in the control core.” She dedigistructs her SMG, and unholsters a Jakobs pistol, fingers pale around the grip. “I don’t care if it doesn’t change anything. I don’t care if I die down here. As long as he fucking dies, that’s enough.” She doesn’t allow for further discussion, stalking down into the shadows of the vault. There is some Hyperion machinery in here, scaffolds and a few elevators that bring the vault hunters deeper into the ground, further and further until lava heats the cramped passages and make the air thick and hazy.

Deep in vengeful thought, Gaige jumps when a hand closes over her shoulder, and just barely manages to resist whirling around and shooting the source of the offending contact. Axton’s concerned look tells her that he knows what she almost did, though he isn’t afraid of her. He never is. “Hey, wanted to catch you when Maya and the others are back there.” He jerks a finger back into the cave, a little ways back. “Listen. They’re worried about you, and I am too. I won’t stop you from killing Jack- hell, I’ll help, the bastard nearly killed all of us- but not at the cost of you getting killed. This isn’t a suicide mission.”

“Now that she’s gone, it is.” Gaige shakes him off, but lets him keep walking beside her in shadow. “I promised her I’d free her, and we’d leave this planet for good. We were going to go home to my dad. I promised I’d take care of her, and who knows, maybe things would move forward from what we were. You saw what happened to her. None of that is going to happen now.” The blade on her pistol glints darkly in the half light, and her eyes are acidic green and full of hatred. “I promised her that I’d kill him, no matter what. I’m going to keep at least one of my promises that I made to her.”

Far below, the earth shivers, grinding stone and sending pulses of lava through the walls like blood through pierced veins. The Warrior stirs to life, and as it bares its claws, so too does Gaige wrap her fingers tight around her pistol, feeling nothing.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Vault Hunters storm the control core to go pick up Gaige's 'totally not a girlfriend' girlfriend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm procrastinating going to bed so have this thing. Technically it's part two to another thing I was writing, but that was all just exposition and this is better anyway.

Anarchy pulsed and burned through Gaige as she fired point-blank at an Angelic Guard loader, corrosive rounds burning and hissing through its metal armor and glowing a green to match her eyes as she cast about for a new foe. An EXP loader rushed her, steps clanking loudly and machinery whirring as it prepared to detonate, but it was lifted off the air with a wave of Maya’s arm and picked off by Zer0 from the shadows. Everything was going remarkably well, the vault hunters dominating the battlefield even as Handsome Jack screamed down at them and Angel begged for the end.

“The eridium injectors are open!” Angel’s voice was weaker than Gaige had ever heard it, and before she could protest the vault hunters had opened fire on the purple tubes. Liquified eridium rained down, exploding outwards as the glass shattered utterly. Eridium hissed off the floor, sparkling off the edges of the glass shards, and the piercing scream of pain that ripped from Angel jerked Gaige out of the high of combat in the way that no bullet or blade could.

Her gun dedigistructed in her hands as she ran toward Angel’s prone body, terror driving her footsteps regardless of her injuries, not feeling the way her limbs protested every move. “Angel!” She didn’t hear Handsome Jack screaming accusations at her. Barely felt Maya on her heels, tattoos glowing a brilliant blue and lighting up almost half of the massive room. All of her focus was on getting to Angel and finally holding her for real, trying to save the girl that she had grown so close to in her time on Pandora. She digistructed the eridium injector she had finally managed to make a perfect version of with Tannis’ help, skidding to a halt on her knees beside Angel.

“I knew you’d come.” Angel’s voice was barely a whisper, her ethereal white wings fading out, Maya’s own light outshining hers like a candle before the sun. “Promise me you’ll kill him, Gaige.” Her hand was little more than skin stretched over bone where it brushed Gaige’s own, weakly interlacing their fingers. Had the circumstances been less dire, Gaige would have recognized the butterflies in her stomach as more than the lingering feeling of battle adrenaline. All she felt at the moment was that Angel was cold, shivery and fragile.

“For you, anything,” Gaige said fiercely. “But for now, I’m getting you out of here.” There was no more time to talk and warn Angel about the incoming needle, and she apologized fervently as she slid the injector into Angel’s skin and veins. The young siren hardly flinched. “Shit, I’m so sorry, that must’ve sucked. But it’ll keep you alive when you’re in stasis. Maya? Are you ready?” 

Maya knelt beside her, blinding in her brilliance, as her own mystical wings flared out from her back. Even with the chaos of the chamber, she wore a calm and comforting countenance, putting a hand on Angel’s thin shoulder. “You won’t feel anything once you’re in this pocket dimension,” she said. “It’ll be like sleeping. We’ll do everything we can for you, Angel. I promise.”

Angel nodded. “I trust you,” she said quietly. “And dad?” Her voice strengthened just a bit, and Jack immediately silenced his furious tirade. There was a pause, and then, “You’re an asshole.”

To spare Angel from having to hear the response, Maya flared her bright wings, closing her eyes and concentrating as she performed the phaselock. There was a different motion to it, and many more levels of focus involved; her arm shook a bit as she raised it as though she were struggling against the dimensions themselves. A glowing sphere of light surrounded Angel, and when Maya closed her fist Gaige had to shield her eyes from the resulting flash. When she could see again, Angel was gone, and Maya’s jaw was clenched tightly.

“That’s exhausting,” she said, blowing out a low breath. “I can’t do this forever. We have to go.” She took Axton’s arm when he offered it to help her up, residual energy burning low in her tattoos and the lingering traces of her wings. “Everyone alright?”

“Eh, I got shot point-blank a few times. NBD.” Gaige shrugged, standing and almost bouncing with excited energy. “Worth it.”

Across the chamber, Zer0 stalked soundlessly around fallen loaders, blade flashing to finish off those that had not been fully disabled. “We are fine, Maya/ No one is hurt too badly/ We should be going.” 

Over the speakers, Handsome Jack’s voice was furious and low. “I’m going to kill you, bandits. You stole my daughter. She’ll die without me.”

Gaige laughed wildly, anarchy still hot in her blood, and flipped Jack off with both hands. “Fuck that, Jackhole!  _ I  _ stole your daughter and I’m not giving her back!” She kept flipping off the screens even as the vault hunters started leaving, walking backwards so she could make sure Jack saw her wicked grin. “I’ll keep her happy, I promise.”

“You’re dead.” Jack snarled at her, but Gaige turned lightly on her heels and snickered, leaving with the rest of her team. 

“Did you seriously tell the most dangerous man on Pandora that you stole his daughter and plan on making her happy?” Axton glanced sidelong at Gaige, grinning. “I knew you liked her, but  _ damn. _ ” She elbowed him hard with her metal arm.

“Not like  _ that _ ,” she said defensively, crossing her arms. “I wanted to piss him off. So what if my bounty skyrockets, it’s already higher than anyone else’s. As for him being the most dangerous man on this planet, I’m the most dangerous girl. So there.”

“I think it’s cute.” Maya chuckled despite the strain on her face. “You owe me a drink when we get back to Sanctuary, though. I save your girlfriend, you pay for my tab tonight, how’s that?”

Gaige indignantly glared at Maya. “ _ Not  _ my girlfriend. A  _ friend _ , for sure, but it’s not, like, official.”

Brick playfully smacked her on the back hard enough that she almost fell flat on her face. “Yeah, okay, Slab.”

“A word of dating advice?” Axton rubbed his ribs where she had elbowed him. His grin was wickedly taunting. “Use protection every time. Moxxi can hook you up and-” He recoiled sharply as Gaige took a swipe at him with her digistruct claws. “Jeez, kid! Maybe don’t try to kill me over a joke.”

She pointed the pale blue claws at him, raising her eyebrows. “She’s not my girlfriend. Don’t say that stuff in front of her. I don’t want to force anything on her even though she’s like my best friend and the cutest person on this planet.” She recalled the digistruct claws, haughtily crossing her arms. “Let’s get back to Sanctuary ASAP. Obviously I’m not a surgeon, but I’m going to be there when Zed and Tannis work on her.”

“You should let me heal you before that,” Maya pointed out. “You’re bleeding everywhere, are you sure you’re okay?” 

“Psh, I’m fine.” Gaige waved her off. “Couldn’t be better.” The trip back to Sanctuary was made in higher spirits than ever, even though some particularly foolhardy Slabs tried to ambush them near the fast-travel station and were quickly dealt with. As Thousand Cuts faded out around them and the pale blue light of teleportation filled their vision, and despite the issue of Angel’s long recovery ahead, Gaige felt calm for the first time since learning of Angel’s plight. She was safe for now, and that was all that mattered.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gaige finally gets to enact vengeance on Handsome Jack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the sequel to chapter 4, and is honestly really rushed but you guys deserve something even if it's my 2AM ramblings. So here's some pain and suffering, as is my craft.

“I’m going to fucking kill you.” As the Warrior’s corpse settles with a slow creak of stone and hiss of lava, Gaige snarls the threat at her real target. Handsome Jack, the most powerful man on Pandora, has been reduced to a wreck shivering with blood loss and near-wild with rage, a cornered animal. “You thought the Warrior would stop me, but Angel asked me when she died to do this. She told me to end this, and I promised her that I would.” She shoots once at his feet, the bullet flying errant, screaming off the stone floor somewhere to the side. Magazine empty, she reloads, slowly and deliberately. She picks a single silver bullet from a pouch by her side and holds it out for him to see. It’s inscribed with his name, written in scratchy letters. “There’s an old myth about named bullets.” She inserts only this one into her gun, leaving the five other chambers empty. “They always find their targets.”  
“Gaige, maybe you should-” Maya is cut off by Lilith, whose eyes still burned violet with eridium.  
“Let her do it,” the older siren rasps, voice harsh from pain. “He killed Roland. I would be doing the same thing if she didn’t.”  
Jack’s low, manic laugh is undercut by the burble of blood in his throat. “You think I’m the monster. I was protecting Angel from people like you, you fucking bandit.” He smiles, smiles when Gaige grabs his throat, wanting to rip and tear and break him so much that her hand shakes despite being made of steel. “And you killed her. You killed my daughter.”   
“You killed her when you locked her in the control core.” Tears part the splatters of blood on Gaige’s face, and it’s hard for her to breathe at all when each breath comes and goes like a knife to her ribcage. “I loved her.” She whispers this like it’s the deepest of secrets, the holiest of revelations. “I loved her so much. I kissed her as she died, Jack. Every night I promised her the world, and you took that away from her.”  
“Your kind isn’t capable of love,” Jack spits like venom. “You only care about yourself, what you could have gotten out of her. Don’t act like you knew her, or cared about her at all. I was the only one who took care of her when she killed her mother. You weren’t there to see what she could do. The core was made to protect her from herself.”  
Gaige explodes outwards into motion, gasping with pain at the sudden force on her metal arm and the sensitive scar tissue where it meets steel, and throws Jack to the ground with a sudden rush of the fury that had smoldered low and ashen not long ago. “Don’t ever tell me that I didn’t know her!” she yells, looming over him. “She loved you before you were Handsome Jack, and wished that you would go back to your old self. She loved flowers and trees and birds, and she wrote poetry sometimes when no one was watching. She read every book she could get in the core even though turning the pages was too much for her when she was sick with eridium poisoning. She talked to me when she was lonely, or scared, and she told me that she didn’t want to die. I knew her!” She points her pistol at Jack’s head, but her hands are shaking and her vision is blurry. “This won’t even change anything.” And she actually sobs, until her pistol drops to her side and she crumples beside it, stunned by the realization. “It won’t bring her back. I thought maybe, maybe, this would…”  
This time, Lilith doesn’t stop Maya from going to Gaige’s side. “Shhh…” For once, Gaige doesn’t fight being held, so Maya pulls her close, picks her up, and nods to Lilith before turning away. “Do it.”  
Lilith picks up Gaige’s pistol from where it had fallen. “This is for Roland,” she says simply, leveling the gun at Jack’s forehead. “And for Angel.”  
The crack of the gunshot doesn’t fill the hole Gaige was hoping would be mended upon Jack’s death. It only echoes there, making it all the more obvious, deep and gaping and all too much like a twisted stab wound. There is no catharsis in his end. Her voice has never sounded so small to herself when she at last can speak again, as the weary group walks back to the fast-travel station, still with Maya holding her. “It didn’t work,” she whispers. “I couldn’t do it.”  
“Vengeance is never the end of healing,” Maya says, and even her gentle wisdom feels too lofty compared to the primal rage, hatred, animalistic bloodlust that Gaige had felt. “You still need time.”  
Distantly, Gaige wonders how much time it will take to forget her single, first and last, kiss from Angel, to unwind every midnight conversation from endless repeat in her memories. “There’s not enough of it,” Gaige says at last. “There’ll never be enough time.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Gaige has some serious anxiety and PTSD, because honestly, everyone in Borderlands must have so many problems.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do I even need to tell you by now that this is unedited? I just want you guys to have a thing, no matter how unpolished.

“Angel?” Gaige whispered, barely loud enough to be heard. It was a stark contrast with her usual tone and volume. “You awake?”

In truth, Angel hadn’t been, but she was a light sleeper and becoming a vault hunter had made this a useful trait- it was good to be able to wake up at the slightest sound, even if there was no danger. “Yeah,” she whispered back, turning onto her side so she could look at Gaige, illuminated very faintly by the moon over the desert where they had camped outside of Oasis (they would have stayed in the town for the night, but Angel hadn’t appreciated the copious number of dead bodies in each and every building, and it had been agreed upon by all that sandworms were better company than the one living inhabitant of the town.) “What’s up?”

“I dunno.” Gaige edged closer, seeking comfort, solace perhaps, in Angel’s arms. “I was thinking about home.” Angel traced slow patterns on Gaige’s back, waiting for her to continue, sensing that she was searching for the words to go on. “And about Marcy,” she whispered. “What I did to her.”

Angel hugged her close, their height difference meaning that Gaige’s head ended up against her tattooed collarbone and chest, breath light and a little shivery. “That wasn’t your fault,” she said softly. “Not at all. I’ve made mistakes programming things too. You didn’t want that to happen.” She knew a lot more about the accident than Gaige was aware of. When she had been in the control core, she’d had access to almost everything on the Echonet, and the gory videos of the accidental murder were easy to find- there weren’t many examples of a murderous robot killing a teenage girl at a science fair. 

Gaige sniffed, huddling closer, and not for lack of warmth in the desert night. “I was looking at the articles about it. They all called me homicidal. A literal maniac. And they might be right.” 

“ _ No _ .” A rare fierceness invaded Angel’s voice, almost a hiss, and she clutched Gaige tighter, in a way that was raw and angry and protective all at once. “ _ No. _ They don’t know you. You’ve said it yourself- Eden 5’s media is corrupt.”

“Angel, you’ve seen me when we’re fighting people.” Gaige’s voice was small against her skin. “I… Sometimes I think I  _ like _ it.” Her breath caught there, and with it, any words she could have said. It took her a moment to compose herself to the point that she could speak, and even then a sob threatened to breach the momentary calm. “Sometimes it’s almost fun. It’s awful and scary and terrible but I  _ liked  _ killing Handsome Jack and the people who kept you in the core and everyone that tried to hurt us on the way.” And she really did break there, burying her eyes in Angel’s throat and shaking, tears hot against the siren’s pulse. “Jack said that I was no better than him, that I wasn’t any different from the moment I killed Marcy, and then that I was worse if I killed him.” Her hand was shaking when it found Angel’s back, tangling in her hair like she needed to anchor herself there. “And I still did it,” she whispered. “I still killed him, Angel. I knew what it would make me, and I did it. That’s even worse.”

“No, no, no. Shh.” Angel kissed Gaige’s hair, smoothing it through with one hand like her mother had done for her all those years ago. “Remember how I told you that he would lie to you? And how he would make you think it was your fault? That’s what this is.” When Gaige didn’t answer, Angel kept talking, filling the quiet night air with something other than fear, other than doubt. “He was always a liar. He could take anything I did and make it into something else that fit his needs, and I believed it. I didn’t know better. But we do now, okay?” 

Gaige nodded weakly, but with no real conviction. “Your girlfriend’s a murderer,” she said with a bitter laugh. 

“And yours is an eridium addict.” Angel smiled sadly, blue eyes outshining the sliver of a moon that hovered roughly in the center of the sky. “Do you think it was my fault that I got addicted?”

“Fuck no.” Gaige’s hand tightened in the long strands of black hair it was tangled deeply in, possessively and protectively. “That was  _ his _ fault. But if you’re trying to make a metaphor out of this, Handsome Jack didn’t come into my workshop and mess with DT.”

“But he did try to kill you when you came to Pandora, and you had to fight to survive.” Angel kissed the top of her head again, closing her eyes and sighing into the soft red strands. “Forget about Marcy for a moment. That was an accident that you couldn’t have predicted, made worse by people who didn’t understand you. What happened on this planet wasn’t an accident, and you reacted in the only way you could have. You stopped him from destroying everything in this world and every other that he didn’t like. I’m proud of you.”

Gaige’s shaky breathing had evened out somewhat, and they stayed like that for a minute, flush with one another and still wishing there was a way to be closer, to take even more comfort from the other’s presence. “You’re such a fucking badass, Angel,” she said softly, and the absurdity of the words versus the tone wasn’t lost on Angel, who laughed as quietly as she could so as to avoid waking anyone else in camp. “Don’t laugh, I’m serious. He put you through so much and you’re still like this. Literally the most caring and loving person ever. Is that cheesy? It feels like it is, but it’s true.” She chuckled, her arm tightening around Angel. She blew out a long breath, calmer now. “Want to go for a walk or something?”

Angel hummed thoughtfully, actually rather comfortable where they were, but there was little chance of her actually falling asleep again and the night was soft, quiet and warm. “We’re not going on the dunes, though. I hate sand worms.” Gaige laughed, pressed a haphazard kiss to her cheek, and pulled her gently by the hand away from camp.

Their skiff was hovering silently alongside the rock shelf they had camped on, the solid ground being the only place the sand worms wouldn’t go. The desert was all soft silvery edges at night, lit by moonlight and the countless unfamiliar Pandoran constellations. Gaige didn’t seem to have a particular destination, picking her way this way and that, avoiding patches of sand where hidden worms could lurk. The outcropping was safe, though, and a higher cliff offered a beautiful view of the sky and the desert landscape below. Swaths of galaxies sent a soft silvery light over the sand until it looked almost stark white.

“I never thought I’d get to see this in person,” Angel said quietly, with a soft smile. “Through my cameras in the control core, I could, but I didn’t think I’d be here.” She took a slow, deep breath, reveling in the wind and the  _ freedom  _ of it all, hand tightening around Gaige’s with the quiet elation. “Especially with you.”

There was something about moonlight that softened everything about Gaige, who was fire and sunlight and fierceness, that softened the sharpness of her eyes and the power of her presence. “I promised you, didn’t I?” She practically breathed the words, arms winding slow around Angel’s thin waist, pulling her close and safe and  _ loved,  _ the night deep around them. “I promised I’d show you everything.” She closed her eyes, leaning in close so that she was a moment from Angel’s lips, foreheads together and breath mingling, content simply in closeness. “I didn’t think you’d save me, too.”

Angel pulled her down that last bit to kiss her, soft and slow and positively glowing in the desert twilight, until she ran out of breath and settled for resting her head on Gaige’s shoulder, where metal met the warmth of her skin, bared by her shirt. “I love you,” she murmured, and Gaige’s arms tightened around her. Angel could feel her girlfriend’s heartbeat, intimately close, beat faster at her words.

She couldn’t tell if Gaige’s laugh was elated or tearful or both, but Gaige threaded her fingers through Angel’s hair and held her like a lifeline, intertwined, in the silvery desert. “I love you too,” she whispered back. It was some time before they returned to camp, before the sunrise, and no one knew they had left at all. All that remained was a sense of comfort and love between them that lasted far beyond the fall of the moon beyond the horizon.

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kinda nsfw, but not obscenely so. Someday I'll write real smut of these two, I think

Angel never knew Gaige for her patience. Doing things gradually, taking her time- those weren’t very Gaige things. There were a few things that she would slow down for, though, and one of them was moments like these, where she kissed long, patient spirals along Angel’s tattoos, following the silvery labyrinth lower across the delicate outline of her ribs, where her breath fluttered shallow and shivery. Even with her eyes closed, Angel could tell that Gaige was smiling. There was the faintest edge of a grin in each kiss, not nearly enough to hurt, but certainly enough to add to the maelstrom of sensation.

Torturously slowly, Gaige traced Angel’s hips, her left with her lips and the right with ghosting fingertips, angled downward. Angel’s hand found Gaige’s hair, let down for the moment and running down her back in a relaxed sort of beauty, and tangled with the silken red strands in the haze of sheer feeling. Angel glanced down at Gaige, meeting her bright green eyes just in time to see mischief spark in them as she veered away from her downward path, rising fluidly, elegantly and powerfully, to hold herself above Angel with a smile.

“You still okay?” she asked, a little breathlessly. “You’d tell me if you weren’t ready?”

Angel nodded, and Gaige stooped down to kiss her, hard enough to turn any coherent thoughts into background noise. Without thinking, Angel tightened her grip on Gaige’s hair, accidentally pulling in her distraction, and was startled when Gaige moaned softly against her lips, breath catching. Immediately, Angel let go, jerking her hand back. “Sorry! Did I hurt you?”

The look in Gaige’s eyes was almost dazed. “No, that was just…” She blew out a breath. “Wow. That was good.”

“Should I… Does that mean you want me to do it more?” Angel asked, carefully lacing her fingers through Gaige’s hair again when her girlfriend nodded.

“Only if you want to,” Gaige said, leaning into the touch. “I like it. Do you still want to do this?” Gaige’s salacious grin is reward enough when Angel pulls her hair, a bit more gently, to direct her back to where they had left off. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gaige flirts. Gracelessly.

 

 

 

 

“Hey, Angel.”

Angel sets down her drink, anticipating the playful gleam in Gaige’s eyes, the slanted set of her smile before she turns to meet it. She has a feeling she knows where this is going- the second the vault hunters celebrate after a successful mission, they go to Moxxi’s bar and drink. And when Gaige drinks, even just a little -she’s halfway through a weak moxxtail now- she gets far bolder. But at least she’s charming. “Yeah?”

As expected, Gaige is wearing her signature grin, all mischievous light, leaning back on the bar with her drink carefully cradled in her robotic hand. It would look almost elegant if Moxxi hadn’t refused to give her one of the proper cocktail glasses- Gaige has broken three of them in the last month by virtue of having an excitable temper and a robot arm that doesn’t know how to be gentle. “So, I may not be a scientist,” she says silkily, “but I can see that we have chemistry.”

Angel sighs good-naturedly, raising an eyebrow. “Gaige, engineers are scientists, aren’t they? Even if they aren’t, that was cheesy even for you.”  
“Are they?” Gaige pauses, momentarily perplexed, before jerking back out of her thoughts. “Okay, that one was really bad, wasn’t it? Shit, I can think of another, hold on.”

Angel laughs, though, shaking her head. “We’re already dating, you don’t need to use your awful pickup lines on me.” 

“Aw, come on. I don’t even know how else to charm pretty girls.” Gaige takes a sip of her drink, thinking. “I’ll borrow one of Maya’s trashy romance novels and try whatever I can find in there, if you don’t want my puns.”  
Angel shudders in only partially-mock horror. “I read one of those once. I got as far as the love interest eating ice cream off of the protagonist before I stopped.”

“That’s something to consider,” Gaige says with a sideways glance and grin at Angel. “Who gets to do the eating, though?” She chuckles at her own double entendre, going to take another sip of her drink when Angel leans in closer.

“For reference, I like any of the flavors with chocolate. Just in case you feel like doing some shopping.” 

Gaige chokes a little on her drink, apparently not having been expecting Angel to play along, and waves off a curious glance from Moxxi across the bar. “Um, _yes,_ definitely. I’ll just, uh, order that. Now. With the fastest shipping.”


End file.
